So as time creeps by quicker and quicker, I can't help but wonder if one day, I'll wake up elderly and reminisce fondly about "the good 'ol days" or a more frightening thought: maybe not be able to reminisce at all. Seeing my ailing grandmother in the hospital over Easter weekend was a really depressing indication of time. After 85 years on earth, her life is reduced to a chair with a table tray that holds her hostage because "she wanders." She is a literal shell of a human being with no awareneness of where she is or who's around her. It's terribly sad to see her like this. I like the vision of the elderly as old and wise with some innate knowledge about the world and a million stories and life lessons to tell. To live to 85 only to die like this is an awful tragedy.
It comforts me some to know that she really lacks the mental capacity to feel sorry for herself. Her life is reduced to sleeping and eating.In any event, I shouldn't be depressed about time at 23. Someone who's advice I greatly value once said: If you can't be happy now, you never will be - A simple but astute oberservation. I still have a lot of great years ahead. I'd like to continue with my rationale that I just keep getting better with age; like a fine wine.
2 comments:
if you reach a point in life where you feel as though you know everything you need to know, or have done everything there is to be done, then inevitably you'll be confined to a chair in a nursing home, a prisoner of your own rigid mind.
but, if you continue to love life with the understanding that all attempts to reach a destination are in vain, then you'll continue to stretch your mind until the day you die, all the while remaining the custodian to your own personal freedom.
then, in death, your life will have been an inspiration to each of those you touched along the way, which, ironically, is not really death at all, but the fountain of eternal youth.
Very nice Aber. And maybe by the time we are getting old, we will know enough about neurons to fend off deterioration on the biological front as well. :)
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